hospitalitystyle.com

(Summer 2011) posted on Thu Jul 28, 2011 EDT

Dressed to Thrill: Bespoke suites in Paris’ Seven Hotel invite guests to try on a wardrobe of experiences.

By Mary Scoviak

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Every fashion season has its breakout collection, the one that seems to capture the right lines, shapes and colors and weave them into the look that makes anyone who wears it feel fantastic. That’s what the new suites at Hotel Seven in Paris are doing for hospitality style. The work of four different design firms, these seven “experiences” take the old-fashioned idea of theming in a fresh, new direction. They’re not just well-decorated stage sets. Backed by inventive construction techniques and innovative technology, these one-of-a-kind spaces allow guests to try on different identities—James Bond, Marie Antoinette, Wonderland’s Alice—or just play with futuristic features, as in a room that shifts from a cool, white library to a crystalline forest at the flip of a light switch in the On/Off suite. 

Like the best of haute couture, Hotel Seven’s suites have an air of fantasy and privilege. But behind the flashy aesthetics, there’s a lot of discipline. The special effects may be over the top; the budgets weren’t. “Philippe Vaurs [president and managing director of Hotel Seven’s parent, Elegancia Hotels] asked each studio to design something unique that would elicit emotion, surprise, a feeling of novelty,” says Sylvia Corrette, who heads her own design/interior architecture practice. “There were no constraints on our imaginations. Still, we had to stay within reasonable budgets without making concessions that would undermine the project. So we had to be very precise in the technical aspects.”

“Technical” is the design driver of the year. The real creativity of Corrette and fellow Paris-based interior architects Paul-Bertrand Mathieu, Vincent Bastie and Virginie Cauet is part and parcel of the construction and installation. For example, for Corrette’s Black Diamond suite, LEDs were embedded in the black carpeting to give it a jewel-like shimmer. She sloped the black glass walls to resemble gem facets, reflecting and refracting strategically positioned lighting. Mirrored walls in the Marie Antoinette suite offer a fairly literal take on the Palace of Versailles’ Galérie des Glaces. “The craftsmen who worked on this project helped us troubleshoot difficult elements such as mounting the glass behind the bed in the Marie Antoinette suite to get the right effect for day or night and laying the false plastic ceiling at the right angle over the Black Diamond suite bed,” Corrette says.